Fun and interesting things to do

Brazilians are friendly, warm, and happy people. Above all they are free-spirited and resent being told what to do. Brazilians are gregarious, outgoing, and love to be around people. The hot climate allows them to spend a great deal of time outdoors, often just chatting with friends or watching people. Women should be aware that it is common for Brazilian men to stare at them or make comments as they walk by; women should not respond in any way to such actions.

Brazilians can be very opinionated, and the vigor with which they argue for their convictions often leads foreigners to believe that they are angry. Visitors should not be offended by such behavior. Brazilians tend to view time more as a sequence of events rather than hours, minutes, and seconds. For this reason they may appear to have an extremely casual attitude about time. Excerpt adapted from Jaime Sichman

Northeastern brazil remains the country's most impoverished region.  Even in the best years, inhabitants of the sertão find it hard to scrape a meagre existance from its parched soil; when periodic droughts strike, the hardy sertanejos migrate by the thousands to crowded shantytowns in the coastal cities or industrial centres in the south.  Such migrations are the stuff of legend in Brazil, inspiring songs, films and novels, but they are by no means a thing of the past.  Despite these hardships, or perhaps because of them, sertanejos are Brazil's friendliest people.